"It's the sword that bothers me, too. Obviously, it's important; obviously, this Prophet doesn't want us to get it. Or at least that's the way it looks to me. From what Ingolf said, he made at least two attempts to probe Nantucket-one that failed completely, and then by stealth with Ingolf's band, through the spy they had at the court of the bossman of Iowa."

Alleyne spoke thoughtfully: "Or the Prophet could have planted it all as a story to get Rudi out of the valley and where he could get at him. Plenty of people know that... ah..."

"Prophecy," Ritva said helpfully.

"Yes, that prophecy about Rudi."

Astrid smiled at him. "No, I don't think so," she said. "If they just wanted to kill him, there are a lot less complicated ways."

Which they seem to have tried at Sutterdown, Eilir pointed out.

"No... no," Astrid said. "Rudi got involved with that only by chance-if chance you call it. They were after In golf. Which means they didn't want us to hear the story; and it couldn't have been collusion to give credence to his story; he very nearly did die before he told us."

"They were trying to kill him, all right," Ritva said, recalling the night in the Sheaf and Sickle's upper corridor; her nostrils widened slightly, smelling again the iron-copper rankness of blood and fear sweat.

Her sister Mary nodded: "That slash on his shoulder and arm must have let out half the blood in his body. From the look of it, the Cutter was aiming at his neck."

She described it again, and they all nodded; everyone here was a warrior, and intimately familiar with the ways edged metal had with human flesh.

"We're both going," Mary added flatly, preempting her aunt as she drew breath to speak.

"Going where?" Alleyne said, arching one brow.

"On the quest, Uncle," Ritva said, feeling a great hap piness bubbling up under her breastbone. "The quest for the sword, with Rudi ... with Artos. I mean, isn't it obvious?"

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Aunt Astrid opening her mouth. They moved to forestall her.

"You can't go! You're Hiril Dunedain, the Lady of the Rangers, and there may be war here-you can't go off into the wilderness," Mary said.

"You're like Elrond or Theoden," Ritva added, using the clinching arguments. "You have a people and a place to ward. We're just ohtar."

The word meant warrior squire, one rank down from Roquen, knight-commander.

"But there should be Dunedain involved," Ritva added.

She did not go on to say that it was the best they could do in the absence of real hobbits, dwarves or elves, though the thought made her smile and exchange a glance with Mary. They loved the stories of the elder days-the two of them wouldn't be here if the tale didn't speak to their hearts-but Aunt Astrid took them with an appalling literal mindedness sometimes. So did a lot of other people in the Dunedain Rangers, for that matter.

But this is the Fifth Age of Middle Earth, or possibly the Sixth; the Third was who knows how long ago, and things have changed.

Alleyne caught her eye, and one of his moved in the slightest hint of a wink.

"I think that would be wise, my lady," he said gravely to his spouse. "After all, Thranduil sent his son Legolas on the quest of the Ring, and Gloin sent Gimli likewise-they didn't go themselves."

Eilir and Hordle nodded vigorously. Astrid sighed deeply, and Mary hid her relief. Wild horses hitched up with triple-reduction gearing couldn't shift Aunt As trid once she got her mind set on something; she was the only person the twins knew who could outstubborn them, though their mother, Signe, came close.

Eilir went on, signing emphatically: I'm not leaving Beregond and Iorlas. They're too young. And I'm your anamchara, not your nanny; you're most certainly not dumping your three on me and going off on an adventure!

"I suppose so. Though Thranduil was thousands of years old and I'm thirty-six. Oh, well, it's the Doom of Men."

"I suspect we're all going to get our fill of adventure much closer to home," Alleyne said grimly. Then he shook off his mood. "But we'll have some time to get ready... and time to live in."

Astrid sighed again. "Yes, yes, Mary and Ritva have leave go on the..." She hesitated, then brightened. "The Quest of the Sunrise Lands."

"Ring!" Mary said.

"Cool!" Ritva echoed.

You have to admit that Aunt Astrid has a way with words. She always comes up with a neat phrase.

Voices were singing as they turned and walked along the path beneath the cliff towards Stardell Hall, a party of hunters in from the woods with their dogs trotting at their heels, bows in their hands and a brace of elk over their packhorses. But it might have been anyone here; a good singing voice wasn't exactly an essential qualification for membership in the Dunedain Rangers, but it helped. This tune had a happy sound with a fast-tripping chorus: Sing ho to the Greenwood!

Now let us go Sing hey and ho!

And there shall we find both buck and doe Sing hey and ho!

The hart, the hind, and the little pretty roe Sing hey and ho!

Stardell had been old when the Change came, origi nally built by the CCC as the headquarters for the park. There was some cleared land nearby for turnout pas ture and gardens, snow covered now. But this steading got more from hunting, and more still in payment for the services of the Rangers. The core of it was tall forest with the high-pitched shingle roofs of the log buildings scattered beneath; homes and workshops, stables, barns and a granary built of rough stone, a Covenstead and a small chapel for the Catholic minority.

Ritva looked up. Several of the larger trees bore flets, round platforms cunningly camouflaged high above the ground, some with walls and roofs above; there were more of those farther up in the mountains, and cave re doubts as well. The flet on the big Douglas fir was where she and her sister stayed when they were in the steading; it had bunk beds and a very pleasant little cast-iron stove.

There were people in plenty bustling about on the ground, near two hundred at this time of year. This was the largest of the Ranger stations, and their main work was as seasonal as farming: guarding caravans and running down bandits and evildoers, with a sideline in destroying man eaters, carrying messages and small valuable parcels, rescuing the afflicted and defending the helpless. Evildoers liked camping out in the cold no more than respectable folk, bandits were no more able to cross snowed in passes than mer chants, and this was the time of year when messages could wait.

There were shouts of greeting as the Hiril Dunedain and her kinfolk came back from their long stroll. A pair of tow-haired girls of not quite three came out of the hall, stumping along in their snowsuits with the mittens dangling on strings. At the sight of Ritva and Mary they sent up a shout: "Gwanun! Gwanun!"

"Yes, we are twins," Mary said, and took Fimalen up on her hip; Ritva took Hinluin.

"And so are you, little Yellow Hair," Ritva said.

"And you too, little Blue Eyes," Mary said.

They're so cute, they almost make you want some of your own, Ritva thought. Someday. Not yet! And it was a bit thoughtless of Astrid to give them interchangeable names like that.

The Larsson family ran to blonds, as did the Lorings. The Larssons also tended to produce twins, both fraternals and identicals, but Astrid's eldest-her son Diorn-was a singleton. He was also black haired and gray-eyed and preternaturally serious for a ten-year-old.

"Mae govannen, gwenyr," he said gravely, putting hand to chest and bowing: Well met, my kinswomen.

They replied with equal formality; Ritva remembered her struggles with the complex vocalic umlauts in the Elvish plural form and envied his being brought up with it from birth. Then everyone trooped into the hall, after shaking out their cloaks. Stardell looked a little like the hall in Dun Juniper, but there was no second floor, only a gallery around what had been the roofline before they raised it. And the carving on the pillars and vaulting raf ters above was more restrained, the colors mostly greens and pastel blues and silver-grays, and the old gold shade of oak leaves in the fall.

The style was what her mother, Signe, had once told her was more Art Nouveau and less Book of Kells than that the Mackenzies favored, eerily elongated dancing maidens and their lords, sinuous trees with blossoms of iridescent glass, and little gripping trolls grinning with bone teeth, peering from corners and holding up the stone finials of the hearth.

The sisters went over by the fire; there was a pleas ant smell of pine boughs and hemlock amid the grateful warmth, and a scatter of children's toys on the floor-a hobbyhorse, a little elk on wheels, a stuffed tiger on a rug made from the hide of a real one. The black gold embossed leather covers of the Histories stood above the hearth on the mantelpiece, flanking images of the Lord and Lady as Manwe and Varda. A Corvallan was waiting there, a small rather dumpy man in the four pocket jacket and pants that people from the city-state favored when they were traveling.

Ritva hadn't seen him here before, and he was look ing around with the I'm seeing it but it can't be real ex pression outsiders often got in Stardell, lost amid the pleasant liquid trilling of Sindarin conversation.

"Mae govannen," Astrid said curtly, and then dropped into English: "Well met, if you prefer the common tongue."

"Lady Astrid, Lord Alleyne," he said, bowing courte ously. "I'm here about that little problem you were concerned with."

Alleyne grinned to himself. Ritva caught the expres sion and suppressed an urge to giggle, and heard Mary snort as she did the same. It wasn't a good idea to diss Aunt Astrid at the best of times; right now she was feel ing sore as a tiger with a nail in its paw because there was finally a real quest, for a sword of power... and she couldn't go.

I'd feel mangly bitter about that myself, in her position, Ritva thought. Mary gave her a little nod. Squared. This is going to be fun ... to watch.

"It isn't a little problem," Astrid said, glaring at him with a cold fury that made him wilt visibly. "By the treaty which ended the War of the Eye, all the realms of the Meeting pay a subsidy to the Dunedain Rang ers for the work we do. By the same treaty, the People and Faculty Senate of Corvallis, as hosts of the Meeting, are responsible for collecting it and forwarding it to us. Quarterly."

"There have been problems-not everyone pays on time, and I'm sure you realize that means we have to take out short-term paper-"

"And I'm sure that is your problem and not mine!" Astrid roared, an astonishing husky sound.

Everyone in the hall stopped and looked; Fimalen and Hinluin hid their faces in Mary's and Ritva's necks, and Diorn stared with bristling suspicion at the man who'd angered his mother.

Astrid went on: "Spay snur khug! What do you think I am, some huckstering dog of a merchant like you, a banker, a debt collector? I have my people to feed and my warriors to arm! You have a debt of honor for the blood we shed in the wilds to keep you fat!"

The Corvallan looked around, licking his lips. The eyes on him were not particularly friendly, and in un conscious reflex he searched for someone who wasn't glaring. Eilir tapped her ear with two fingers and shook her head at him with a look of pity that he found disqui eting. John Hordle was smiling... but he was also lean ing an elbow on the pommel of the four-foot sword he usually carried slung across his back, with his right hand on the long quillions of the guard. When their gaze met, his thumb jerked out to point to Alleyne Loring.

The envoy made a mute appeal to Alleyne, and the Englishman shrugged slightly and silently mouthed, Pay up!

The Corvallan sighed and reached a hand inside his jacket. When it came out he held a rectangle of black leather; he opened it and pulled the fountain pen out of its loops.

"Will you take a check drawn on the Faculty Senate's account with First National of Corvallis, Lady Astrid?"

"By all means," Astrid said, all graciousness again. "Make it payable to Dunedain Enterprises, Limited, if you prefer the common tongue. In Edhellen, that would be Gwaith-i-Dunedain, Herth."

Corwin, Valley of Paradise, Montana February 1, CY22/2021 A.D.

The Church Universal and Triumphant had come to the high green pastures of Paradise Valley a decade before the Change. Their leaders had told them that the end of the world would come soon, in nuclear fire. The elaborate maze of underground shelters and stockpiled weapons hadn't been very useful when the end came instead with a soundless flash of light, but the massive stores of foodstuffs and tools and clothing most emphat ically had. Still, they had been deep in quarrels with the local ranchers when the Prophet arrived with a few followers, fleeing the great dying of California. The Church had taken him in, and its leader proclaimed that his vision was from the Ascended Masters...

Sethaz felt himself sweat as he backed out of the Pres ence. It was getting worse, the darkness and the smell and the long ranting harangues. Thank the One that it had been fairly comprehensible this time. It was almost as bad as his mother had been, once the Alzheimer's had progressed. The pillow had been a mercy. Perhaps...

No! he thought. Not yet.

The path outside was lined with his personal Cutters, Guardians of the House of the Ascended, the Sword of the Prophet; they went to one knee in the snow as the Son of the Prophet appeared, the sheathed tips of their shetes resting in the snow ahead of them, their heads bent over the hilts. The red-brown of their lacquered leather armor showed brilliantly against the pale carpet of winter, with the golden-rayed sun on their breasts; if they'd been on a mission instead of guarding the House of the Prophet, they'd have worn white cloth over it.

The cold lay on his face as he looked up to the Absa roka Mountains to the east, so intense that it made the air seem liquid. Snow peaks cradled the Valley of Par adise on both flanks, floating high and holy where the air thinned between the world of Man and the Beyond. Between him and the mountains loomed the unfinished bulk of the Temple of the Dictations, swarming with workmen even in winter. Smoke drifted high against heaven, smelling of hot brick and scorched metal.

There was a long silence as he stood and watched the morning light tinge the jagged white horizon with a hint of pink, letting the clean wind blow the nausea out of him. He wasn't an imposing sight in himself, a man just short of thirty, a little on the tall side of me dium, his cropped hair brown and his eyes an everyday hazel, slender and strong with a swordsman's thick wrists and an archer's broad shoulders. Yet the aura about him was enough to keep others at a deferential distance.

At last Councilor of the Way Charom came over, boldest of a knot of ecclesiastical bureaucrats. They had grown over the domains of the Church Universal and Triumphant like mold over bread these last ten years, but there was no way to do without them.

"What is the word of the Prophetic Channeler, your holiness?" he said.

"Wheel may turn wheel, and that wheel may turn a wheel or a shaft, but no more, lest the anger of the As cended Masters be again turned on us, and mankind's pride be broken in the dust again."

The stout shaven-headed man in his wool and furs bowed over linked hands, but he couldn't hide a flicker of relief. Sethaz inclined his own head, very slightly, but a mark of acknowledgment all the same. It would have been very awkward if the gearing necessary to run wind mills to pump water had been declared Abomination. The Guardian of the Way was what a secular state might have called an interior minister, and it would have been his responsibility to enforce the edict.

There was enough trouble making sure that all the women covered their hair.

"May I ask how the Prophet is?" he asked, greatly daring.

Sethaz thought, then decided to allow it. "His earthly, human shell of this embodiment grows weak," he said, which everyone knew. "One day soon he will rejoin the Unseen Hierarchy and cast aside the envelope he wears. It is a burden and a torment to him, though one he bears willingly for us."

Charom nodded again and spoke with unctuous relish: "It is good that you will be here, his chosen Son and successor, trained through many Embodiments to receive the Dictations."

You mean it's good that you got in with the winning side early, Sethaz thought, and flicked a hand in dismissal. The minister withdrew.

Alone he paced between the compounds, with only the six triads of Cutters that accompanied him every where. Little remained of pre-Change Corwin; most of that had burned in the fighting when the Church took full control of the valley. Now it was a complex of new buildings, most built in two-story blocks of gray stone and shingle roofs set around courtyards, a few of the older ones of timber; covered walkways connected them above the streets. In the summertime the gardens were very beautiful, but now they lay dormant, banked under earth and straw and mounded snow that glittered with ice crystals.

The snow was colored brown with dirt where sleds carried loads through the tree lined streets; grain in sacks, salvaged metal bound for the smithies or weapons and tools out of them, firewood, charcoal, frozen sides of beef and mutton, a thousand other things that came in as tribute from the regions that acknowledged the Dictations.

People swarmed as well, women in headscarves and long skirts and overcoats, men in pants and jackets and fur caps, officials of the Church in their heavy robes, ex pressionless slaves in thick rags carrying burdens or pulling sleds. All paused reverently when a priest climbed a podium set beside the street and read a brief passage from the Dictations. He caught a snatch of it.

" '... Vigil of the Violet Flame, but the soulless min ions of the Nephilim prevailed over the men of Camelot, and...' "

"Amen! Amen! Amen!" the chorus thundered out when he'd finished, and then the folk turned back to their business.

Sethaz went in under an arch marked with the sun disk; he liked to do unannounced inspections. If you relied too much on written reports or scheduled visits there was always the danger you'd end up in a puzzle palace of deceptions stage managed by underlings. The guards there-trainees were strictly segregated-slapped left fist inside right hand and bowed low. This building was one of the Prophetic Guard's; the courtyard was roofed over, rising in a laminated timber barrel vault with many skylights, with the cells of the students looking down from all around and open classrooms, offices and librar ies and refectories below. The layout made it easier for a single observer in the courtyard to keep track of ev erything that occurred, as well: it was called the panop ticon, and the Dictations attributed the method to the Ascended Master Plato.

Several dozen of the youngest students knelt in one end of the court, resting from physical training and chanting: The beloved Maha Chohan gave me a grant Of many good and fine life streams Like a golden chain, girdling the Earth, Is the Unseen Hierarchy of the Ascended Lords.

Without the Unseen Hierarchy, The Earth would long ago Have passed into oblivion...

A senior student prowled behind them with a rod of split ash, waiting for an error or hesitation. The faces of the novices were glazed with the effort of the endless repetitions; only so could the Truth be ground into the soul, with sleeplessness and hunger. Not an eye of the juniors flickered away from the Preceptor who led the chant. The rattle and thud of weapons practice came from the center of the courtyard; for a moment Sethaz and his personal guards watched.

The trainees were young, their faces smooth and hairless, scalps shaved, a mixture of levies from the newly conquered regions and the sons of ambitious families closer to the core territories. The Sword of the Prophet were like the priesthood, a pathway to office and power. The older classes were sparring, stripped to the waist, using wooden swords or staffs or hand-to hand. There was a constant clatter of wood on wood, an occasional thump and grunt as a blow went home. Sweat ran down their shaven scalps and muscular tor sos, giving the air a musky pungency under the scents of wood and soap and stone; the instructors here were in the armor of Guardians, often nearing middle age, always scarred. Some lacked a hand or foot or were otherwise crippled.

The students bore scars as well, of the scourge and hot iron, from punishment or self-inflicted efforts to reach the trance state where you became one with the Mas ters. Pictures of those Ascended Lords graced the walls, above the mirrors and stretching bars; Christ and Zoroaster, Muhammad and Gautama Buddha, Blavatsky and Mundy, his own mother and the current Prophet.

Sethaz watched the practice in silence for a few min utes. Then he snapped his fingers and the senior instructor came over. He had the chin beard and close cropped hair of a warrior elder, streaked with the first gray hairs. He'd been a fighting man even before the Change, and joined the Church not long after.

"How do they progress, Commander Sean?" the Prophet's son asked.

"Son of the Prophet, they're doing fairly well," the man said. "But we haven't the training cadre to expand the program as quickly as I'd like."

Sethaz cocked an eye at the oldest class, the eighteen year-olds. He was less than thirty himself, but he felt like one carved from the granite of the hills compared to them.

"They look to be shaping well."

Sean nodded. "Yes, Dispenser of the Word, and they can help with the basics for the new intakes. But their knowledge is still theoretical. They need combat experience before they're fit to be instructors themselves."

Sethaz nodded. "Let's see how they do at second-level trials."

Then he stripped off his heavy winter coat, and the sweater and silk shirt beneath it. One of the students let that distract him, and went down under his opponent's staff. The instructor added a few hearty kicks before he rose.

"Those three," Sethaz said.

Staff scurried to bring practice armor, much like the combat variety except that it was more battered and worn, and blunted blades-a step up from the lath-and-wood of everyday drill. After the suit had been strapped on he reached out his arms, and shield and shete were there. The rest of the students grouped themselves in files of three and went to one knee, watching silently and controlling their breathing with drilled ease.